yoga

I went to yoga tonight. I really, really hadn't wanted to go. When I left work it was just starting to drizzle and it was all-out downpour by the time I got home. Traffic was so terrible from the rain that I didn't walk in my front door until about 5:40pm, and I have to leave by 5:50pm to make it to my weekly class in time. After over an hour in traffic, the last thing I wanted to do was hurry to eat something, hurry to change, and to hurry (back in traffic again) to get to the gym. Ugh. But Mike made some off-hand comment about how I "should" go, and I realized that he couldn't MAKE me feel guilty if I didn't already feel guilty myself, so I got my act together and off I went.

By the time I got there, I had calmed down a bit and was looking forward to the practice. The first half hour or so was pretty intense with lots of vinyasa flow. I was starting to feel calm and starting to even enjoy myself. I felt proud for having gotten there, felt powerful in many of the postures, and could feel myself beginning to relax into the moment.

Then we got to Pigeon pose.

F'ing Pigeon.

Now, I have always a love/hate relationship with pigeon. It's never my favorite pose to do (it's physically intense), and I generally find myself worrying the whole time that I'm not doing it "right." (For some reason I worry about that way more for this posture than for any other one. Huh.) So it's usually a physical and emotional challenge and I end up dreading it every week as a result.

But tonight I totally lost it.

We got into pigeon, and all of the sudden I just started sobbing. Like, all-out, blubbering, red-face, splotchy-messed sobbing.

Without any warning, I had these visions of Lucy.  This incredibly intense longing I still feel for her. What I wouldn't give to have her on my lap one more time, to give her one more pet. How guilty I feel that I was anxious when her back legs went numb and that I wasn't able to bring her calm and peace before we brought her to the emergency vet. What an agonizing decision it was to put her down, and the blind trust I saw in her eyes as we made that decision. How incredibly lonely I felt as I held her still body. How I couldn't bear to leave her alone in that room, even knowing she was already gone. How empty our house still feels without her.

And, at the same time, I also had this realization in Pigeon pose of how quickly her death helped me to be aware of how miserable I was in other areas of my life. That I had gotten myself out of one horrific work situation, yet had been placed into another equally horrific one. That, because of losing her and Mac, I realized that my family was still my number one priority in life but my level of misery was having a profound effect (again) on my ability to be present and enjoy time with my husband and daughter. Losing her made me realize the importance of harnessing what little inner strength I had left in order to make changes to be happier and to be present in my own life.

And I also had the realization, looking back, that I DID IT. That my life today is infinitely better than it was six months ago. I have supportive coworkers; I'm finding my niche at work; I have time for hobbies; I'm enjoying my time with Rose and Mike.

I felt as if my memory of Lucy came to me to remind of the inner strength and strong values that I have had all along, but which had gotten buried in the mess of those work situations.  As I came to that realization, I also became aware that the refrain of the song being played during Pigeon pose was all about "forgiveness" -- I wept for losing Lucy, and I also wept for having come so close to losing myself in the misery that I felt back then. I hadn't wanted to believe that I had ended up in a second horrific work situation after just having extricated myself from the other one, so I had tried to convince myself that it wasn't true - and I needed to forgive myself to turning to denial for so long.

It took me the rest of the practice to stop crying. When I finally left the yoga studio, I realized I had smears of eye makeup all over the sleeve of my shirt from wiping my tears away.

And when I walked out of the gym toward my car, there was the most amazing full-sky rainbow. It struck me as the perfect metaphor - the beauty of the rainbow following the storm, just as my life feels beautiful after the unbearable pain of losing Lucy.

Miss you, Loose-ma-goose.

 Thank you, Lucy, for all that you taught me. I love you and miss you, little Loose-Monster.






As an aside: 
Interestingly, as I did a quick web search for a photo to illustrate pigeon pose above, I came across all sorts of pages like this:
Four Reasons Pigeon Pose Makes you Cry
Emotions in Motion
Four Yoga Poses to Unlock Emotions